Tag Archives: Shakespeare

A La Une, Urania

Writing across languages: the challenge of transnational literature in Canada.

An oxymoron by excellence, Canadian literature offers a number of singularities, especially when it is written by members of an immigrant community. Italian-Canadian literature is a case indeed. Although it may resemble postcolonial literature, it differs from it in many ways. It can be understood, of course, through the book, and thus reveals the ecosystem of languages that produces and promotes its circulation. So let’s start at the beginning, with “the influence of the book”, the title of the first Canadian novel. What was the influence of Italian books in Canada ?

For publication in Italian alone is no longer the only criterion for appreciation. Present in Sulpician libraries as early as the 17th century i, the Italian-language book immediately asserted itself as an index of the ‘transculturation’ in action in this rapidly changing colonial society: a publishing constant right up to the present day.

Mass emigration to Canada, ‘the last frontier “ii at the turn of the last century, created the conditions for its rise. It was the Italian press network, first the channel of communication for immigration agents and then for Fascist associations, which would later serve as its matrixiii. On the eve of the Second World War, the Italian community numbered some 100,000 expatriates, an ideal readership for the contributors to these newspapers.

Gli Italiani ‘veri’
The first to break the ice was Mario Duliani (1885–1964). La Città senza donne (1944) is a first-person account of his internment in labour camps during the war, along with 600 of his compatriots. But the book was first written in French, before the author translated it into Italian the following yeariv. Italian publisher Cosmo Iannone reissued it in 2018v.
This linguistic versatility is characteristic of many Italian writers like Giose Rimanelli. This brilliant writer, whose reputation was tarnished by his youthful adherence to Fascism, was the subject of his first novel, il tiro al piccione. This rare example of the literature of the vanquished was to seduce Cesare Pavese just before his suicide. The novel was eventually published by Elio Vittorini in Mondadori’s prestigious ‘Medusa degli Italiani’ collection. Rimanelli published his other novels in Italy, but lived until his death in the United States and Canada, teaching at their leading universities. In 1953, he even edited the weekly Il Cittadino canadese. As a professor at the University of British Columbia, he took an interest in Canadian literature, and wrote an acclaimed essay, Modern Canadian Stories, (McGraw Hill-Ryerson Press 1966), a landmark in Canadian literature. Although his novels were often written in Italian, it was in English that he published Benedetta in Guysterland (Guernica, 1993), which won the prestigious American Book Award the following year. Four years later, he published Accademia, a novel about the ups and downs of campus life. Molise and Other Poems were published in Ottawa (Legas 1998).

Rimanelli typifies the ever-present paradox of the Italian writer abroad. His linguistic versatility makes him invisible in one or other of the national literature, even though he contributes to making them better known ! Publishing houses that publish exclusively in Italian in Canada are an exception, and often on the initiative of the authors themselves when they don’t publish directly in their mother country. Such is the case of Camillo Carli, founder of the influential weekly Tribuna italiana (1960–1980), arguably the best title in the Italian press. His novel La giornata du Fabio was first published in Italy (Lalli 1984), then translated into French by Maurizia Binda, (Guernica 1991); Tonino Caticchio self-published ‘La poesia italiana del Québec’ (1983); Romano Perticarini of Vancouver wrote his poems in Italian, collected in Via Diaz, in a bilingual edition, translated into English by Carlo Giacobbe, (Guernica 1988); Filippo Salvatore published Tuffo e Gramignia (Simposium, 1977) before translating it under the title: Suns of the Darkness (Guernica 1980); Claudio Antonelli, another Istrian, remains faithful to Dante’s language: Scritti canadesi, partenze e ritorni di un italiano a l’estero, a collection of almost 200 chronicles and lectures on this theme, published in 2002 in Montreal by Losna & Tron. He will publish L’italiano; lingua ‘in tilt’, a kind of dictionary of the Italian language in the test of new technologies (Edarc edizioni, Firenze 2014). He does it again with Cari italiani, le mie lettere a BSV, his digital chronicles (Edarc edizioni, 2017).

But Lamberto Tassinari is undoubtedly the most original of all. Director and co-founder of ViceVersa magazine, in 2009 he published the first edition of his landmark essay « Shakespeare? E il nome d’arte di John Florio ». This was followed by the English translation by William McCuaig (Giano 2013), and finally the French translation by Michel Vaïs, published in Paris (le bord de l’eau, 2016) under the title John Florio alias Shakespeare. The German edition is scheduled for 2024. As the title suggests, the Florentine-born writer authoritatively defendsvi the renewed thesis that Shakesperare is the son of an Italian exile of Jewish origin. A tutor to the English nobility and secretary to the Queen, Florio was, among other things, a lexicographer and translator of Boccacio and Montaigne into English! His position at the heart of the nascent British literature is no stranger to the posture of ‘the margin’ that the great writer Paul Valéry, himself of Italian origin, used to define Italianity. “…Advantage of a position on the fringe’.

Italian-Canadians
The intersection of languages and cultures is also at the heart of the editorial project of the transcultural magazine ViceVersa. Published in Italian, French and Italian, this bimonthly magazine, printed in Montreal from 1983 to 1996 and now available digitally (www.viceversaonline.ca), is considered to be the most innovative Canadian editorial project of the end of the last centuryvii. In these pages, we bring together the key players in Italian-Canadian publishing ‘from sea to sea’. Among them is Antonio d’Alfonso. Founder of Editions Guernica (1977), this publisher, who is also a poet and translator, worked for 33 years to make the authors of the ‘two solitudes’ known in the other language. In the world’s 2nd largest country, the two solitude once explored by writer Hugh McLennan among the descendants of the two colonial powers now extends to migrants and First Nations.

In this perspective, D’Alfonso publishes his compatriots of Italian origin. He played a pivotal role as a pioneer and mediator not only for his own community, but for Canadian publishing as a whole. A writer and filmmaker himself, he won the Trillium Award for his body of work, which includes some forty titles, including In Italics : In Defence of Ethnicity (Guernica 1996) Un vendredi du mois d’août (Leméac 2004) and Two-Headed Man : Collected Poems 1970–2020 (Guernica Editions, 2020). His most recent essay, The Italian Canadian Writer (Exthasis 2023), is an impressive survey of this young literature.

But while his publishing house publishes in all three languages, it is in the English-speaking world that Guernica will make its mark. And with good reason: most of the 2nd and 3rd generation Italian community now speaks English, the” lingua del pane”. In 1988, in Vancouver, The Association of Italian Canadian Writers  was founded, with the Bressani Awardviii as its prize. Both the number of members and the anthologies that bring them together have multiplied. To celebrate their 30th anniversary, the AICW  published Anthology of Canadian writing (Longbridge Books, 2018), bringing together some one hundred contributions in three languages. To account for this production, the academic world is also structuring and diversifying. Joe Pivato of Arthabasca University is leading the way. While holding the Mariano Elia Chair in Italian-Canadian Studies at York University (1987-88), he taught the first course on Italian-Canadian literature :  Contrasts: Comparative Essays on Italian-Canadian Writing (Guernica 1985–1991). Other publications include: Echo: Essays on Other Literatures (1994), The Anthology of Italian-Canadian Writing 2015, Longbridge Books, Montreal – and most recently

 . The journal ‘Italian Canadiana’, an official periodical of the ‘Centro canadese scuole’, will periodically report on research in this field.

As for novels and short stories, Franck Paci led the way with a realistic trilogy: The Italians – 1978 – . Black Madonna – 1982 – . The Father – 1984 – , all published by Oberon Press. Other authors entered the breach: Michael Mirolla, current co-editor of Guernica, The Formal Logic of Emotion – Signature Editions, 1991 – , End of the World, – Black Moss Press, 2021 – and more recently The Collection Agency Files – Exile, 2023 – , and Genni Gunn – On the Road, 1991 – . But the one who really makes his mark is Nino Ricci. Lives of the Saints – Cormorant Books, 1990 – , the first novel in a trilogy, immediately won him the Governor General’s Novel Award, Canada’s highest literary distinction. In 2003, Nino Ricci published Testament – Harperone 2002 – , a fictionalized biography of Jesus Christ, and won the Trillium Award. The Origin of species, – Other press edition 2010 – earned him yet another Governor General’s Award, arguably making him the most successful Italian-Canadian novelist of his generation.

Women Writers ‘alla ribalta’
The women writers are not to be outdone. Mary di Michele and Caterina Edwards established their voices in Western Canada and Toronto. The former with Tenor of Love – Viking Canada, 2004 – Bicycle thieves, Toronto, ECW, – misFit book, 2017 – and the latter with The Sicilian Wife – Linda Leith Publishing, 2015 – . In Montreal, it’s Mary Melfi who makes her difference heard in her poetry, A Queen is holding a Mummified Cat – Guernica, 1982 – as well as in her theatre – Foreplay and My Italian Wife, Guernica, 2012 – . The surrealism of her poetic universe, punctuated by abrupt phrasing and populated by surprising, lapidary images, reflects the inequalities of a society imbued with progress. Her latest opus, Welcome to Hard Times – Ekstasis, 2023 – , is no exception. Her astonishing memoir Italy revisited – Guernica, 2009 – , translated into French in 2015 by Claude Beland – Triptyque, 2015 – , has earned her well-deserved recognition.
Now it’s the women who are setting the pace. Two names stand out. Licia Canton, co-editor of Accenti magazine – www.accenti.ca – , which also includes Longbridge Editions, was also a former president of AICW. Author of a collection of short stories, The Pink House and Other Stories – Longbridge, 2018 – and a short novel; Almond Wine and Fertility – Longbridge, 2008 – , she has also coordinated a number of anthologies on women, the latest of which Here and Now: An Anthology of Queer Italian-Canadian Writing – Longbridge Books, 2022 .

Connie Guzzi-McParland now presides over the destiny of Editions Guernica. She published The Girl of piazza d’Amore, – Linda Leith Publishing, 2013 – a short novel about her childhood, followed by The Women of Saturn – Innana 2017 – .This book and the first , , were merged into one novel and translated into Italian and published by Rubbettino Editore in 2021. In 2022, she published the biography of Italian Canadian opera singers, Louis and Gino Quilico, An Opera in 3 Acts, also published simultenaously in French -Un  opéra en 3 Actes- by Linda Leith Publishing, 2022.

Italo-Quebecers
A minority within a minority, the publishing activism of French-speaking Italophones is more reserved. The first to make a name for himself, and to make his claim loud and clear, was Marco Micone. His plays such as Gens du silence – 1980 – , Addolorata –1984 – Déjà l’agonie, – 1988 – evoke the paradox of the immigrant son imprisoned by his parents’ silence and … by his trilingualism, which should normally emancipate him. His plays are collected in Trilogia – VLB, 1996 – , followed by Migrances – VLB, 2005 – and On ne naît pas Québécois, on le devient, – Del Busso éditeur, 2021 – .
Unlike their English-speaking colleagues, French-language Italian publishers don’t capitalize on their origins. Antonio del Busso, born in Spinete, founded Boréal, the flagship of Quebec publishing, directed Fides, the historic house of Quebec publishing, and then the Presses universitaires de Montréal. His namesake, however, defend a catalog focused on Quebec political history, as evidenced by the books of Claude Corbo, former rector of the Université du Québec à Montréal, also of Italian origin and author of L’échec de Félix-Gabriel Marchand [2015] and Tocqueville chez les perdants [2016]. The same applies to Liber https://www.editionsliber.com. Founded in 1990 by Giovanni Calabrese, it specialises in the humanities and philosophy.

Among female writers, it’s Carole David, whose mother is Italian, who stands out. She took part in the anthology Quêtes – Guernica, 1983 – , which brought together eighteen Italian-Quebec writers, and published some twenty books, including Terra vecchia – Les Herbes rouges, 2005 – , Impala, – Les Herbes rouges, 1994 – and Hollandia, – Héliotrope, 2011 – . Francis Catalano rediscovered his Italian origins when he took part in the same anthology. Since then, he has continued to explore his Italian roots, both through translations of contemporary Italian poets such as Valerio Magrelli, Fabio Scotto and Antonio Porta, and through his own poetry: Panoptikon, [Triptyque, 2005], Qu’une lueur des lieux, Douze avril, [Écrits des forges, 2018] and his first novel, On achève parfois ses romans en Italie, [l’Hexagone, 2012] and Ihis latest poetry book : Climax 2023 ( Mains Libres)

 

At the end of this dense and all-too-brief panorama, it’s timely to ask whether Italian-Canadian literature is the product of ultraliberal consumerism, or the culmination of emancipation assumed by a mature immigrant community ? Ottawa academics William Anselmi and Kosta Gouliamos argue for the first side of the equation in Elusive Margin – Guernica 1998 – , while Franco Loriggio explores the second in the essay he once edited: Social pluralism and Literary History – Guernica 1996. In this period of identity withdrawal, will his fertile exchange with Italian-Canadian literature endure? These questions remain open. In this respect, Canadian literature written by Italian writers is a textbook case: a metaphor for our universe in perpetual transformation.

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i Colonial libraries, whether private or religious, already had a few thousand books in Italian. On this subject, read Amelie Ferrigno’s article ‘Italian books in Montreal collections’ https://journals.openedition.org/diasporas/4994

ii The historian Robert H. Harney, specialist in Italian immigration to America, used the term ‘the final frontier’ to describe the movement of mass Italian immigration from South America north to Canada in the middle of the 19th century.

iii Early publications included L’Italo-Canadese, founded in 1893, Il corriere del Canada, 1895, La Patria Italiana, 1904, followed in the 1930s by the weekly Il Citttadino canadese, 1941, and in later decades by Corriere canadese, Il corriere Italiano, 1952–2023, and Tribuna Italiana, 1963.

iv Italian writers should practice it systematically, see: Self-translation as a problem for Italian-Canadian writers Joseph Pivato*géfile:///C:/Users/Fulvio%20Caccia/Downloads/936-1864-1-SM.pdf

v Duliani’s career deserves a closer look. This Istrian-born critic and playwright wrote in both French and Italian. His plays were performed in France and Canada, and one of them, La fortune vient en parlant, was even introduced by Edit Piaf in 1949.

vi The French daily newspaper Le Monde devoted a full page of its pages to him.

vii On this subject, see Le projet transculturel de ‘ViceVersa’, proceedings of the international seminar of the CISQ in Rome, edited by Anna Mossetti, Rome, 2006, 117 pages.

viii Named after the Italian Jesuit who became one of the famous ‘Canadian Martyrs’. This prize is awarded to an Italian-Canadian writer, depending on the literary genre.

A La Une, JOHN FLORIO IS SHAKESPEARE

DON QUICHOTTE ET HAMLET La Spanish Connection de Shakespeare

Lamberto Tassinari

Ce titre vous donne des frissons ? À moi aussi…, mais laissez-moi vous expliquer.

La route qui lie don Quichotte à Hamlet part de Londres, c’est-à-dire de Shakespeare, de son identité incertaine. La Shakespeare Authorship Question, ainsi qu’a été définie la question de la paternité des œuvres de Shakespeare, n’est pas le résultat d’une paranoïa qui dure depuis quatre siècles, mais une affaire très sérieuse à laquelle se sont intéressés des esprits parmi les plus brillants des nos temps modernes : Walt Whitman, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Henry James, Sigmund Freud, parmi d’autres.

En 2007, deux acteurs shakespeariens réputés, sir Dereck Jacobi et Mark Rylance, ont parrainé une initiative internationale, la Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare, dont le but est justement de faire le jour sur l’énigme littéraire la plus importante de l’histoire. Il est donc légitime et raisonnable de douter !

JF y Quijote

Shakespeare n’a jamais existé. Toutes ses pièces ont été écrites par un inconnu qui portait le même nom que lui. Alphonse Allais, 1854-1905.

Londres

Même la critique shakespearienne officielle admet que la personne de Shakespeare manque de consistance, que l’homme n’est pas là . La personnalité de l’auteur a explosé en s’éparpillant dans les personnages de son théâtre et de sa poésie à un niveau et d’une façon qui n’ont pas d’égal chez d’autres écrivains modernes de la même stature. Autre fait frappant : aucun contemporain parmi les écrivains et les correspondants étrangers à Londres n’a jamais eu le grand dramaturge comme ami, compagnon ou adversaire. De tous les documents qu’on possède datant de son vivant, aucun n’est vraiment personnel, et aucun ne présente comme un écrivain l’homme de Stratford. Shakespeare, à son époque, apparaît comme une réputation littéraire, comme un nom, un auteur abstrait plutôt qu’un protagoniste réel de la vie mondaine et culturelle. Nous ne possédons aucun manuscrit du Barde, à peine six signatures tremblotantes, pas une seule lettre reçue ou envoyée. Il n’a jamais dédicacé une pièce de théâtre à ses prétendus mécènes et personne ne lui a jamais dédicacé quoi que ce soit. Le génie autodidacte de Stratford, ni noble ni instruit, aurait écrit des œuvres pleines d’érudition pour les rois et pour les privilégiés, mais ses deux filles signaient d’une croix… Si on examine Shakespeare, son histoire, on y perçoit deux courants distincts et irréconciliables. D’un côté, la vie assez bien documentée mais insignifiante d’un acteur médiocre et imprésario de théâtre qui a été baptisé, qui n’a, probablement, fréquenté que quelques années l’école, sûrement pas l’université, qui s’est marié, a eu des enfants, a acheté des propriétés, n’a jamais voyagé, a été usurier, a connu des ennuis judiciaires, n’a pas possédé un seul livre, pas même une bible. Ce même personnage a dicté à un avocat un testament d’une banalité déconcertante (voir http://www.johnflorio-is-shakespeare.com/will.html) mais si parfaitement en accord avec la vie qu’il a vécue. De l’autre côté, il y a une œuvre théâtrale et poétique parmi les plus grandes sinon la plus grande de tous les temps, d’une complexité, d’une richesse culturelle et linguistique infiniment supérieures aux œuvres des auteurs contemporains britanniques.

Si l’homme de Stratford possède une identité embarrassante, il faut dire que ce vide a représenté une occasion idéale pour l’imaginaire critique : tout est dans le texte, la vie ne compte plus, ont conclu les critiques littéraires.

Mais rapprochons-nous de l’embouchure du tunnel.

Dans ma recherche sur Shakespeare, le véritable tournant a été la découverte de l’existence de Giovanni Florio, né à Londres en 1553. Il y a notamment, dans La Tempête, un passage utopique, un exploit philosophique prononcé par Gonzalo (2,1,143-152) que la critique a reconnu depuis toujours être le calque du Discours sur les Sauvages de Montaigne. Or le traducteur anglais du texte de Montaigne que Shakespeare a copié est, justement, John Florio. À partir de cette trace, ma recherche s’est concentrée sur le traducteur oublié. J’ai assez rapidement compris que Florio, loin d’être un acteur secondaire, était un protagoniste essentiel de la vie culturelle et littéraire de l’époque. Je me suis alors demandé pourquoi ce linguiste, lexicographe, traducteur, courtisan, ami des plus puissants parmi les nobles de son époque, durant seize ans secrétaire personnel de la reine Anne du Danemark et grand diffuseur des cultures européennes en Angleterre a été boudé par tous les universitaires de la planète. Pourquoi a-t-il été classé par toute la critique comme un technicien, un « col bleu », à côté des vrais artistes ? Pourquoi les seules et rares études qui présentent Florio comme un intellectuel majeur et un écrivain de grand talent datent-elles toutes d’une courte période entre les années 1920 et 1930 ? Pourquoi, depuis, ces quatre-vingts ans de silence ? Enfin, pourquoi un acteur si important pour la connaissance de la Renaissance anglaise et en particulier pour l’œuvre de Shakespeare a-t-il été ignoré ?

Au moment où j’ai lu les deux biographies de Florio, la première publiée en français en 1921 par Clara Longworth de Chambrun, Giovanni Florio. Un apôtre de la Renaissance en Angleterre à l’époque de Shakespeare, et la deuxième en anglais, John Florio, The Life of an Italian in Shakespeare’s England de Frances Amelia Yates, j’ai décidé de me consacrer à ma recherche avec une énergie nouvelle. Sept ans plus tard, en février 2008, mon livre a paru en italien. En 2009, j’ai publié la traduction anglaise intitulée John Florio, The Man Who Was Shakespeare. Avec ce livre, j’ai pu conclure que John Florio a écrit des œuvres de poésie et des pièces de théâtre, soit en les laissant anonymes, soit en les signant sous le pseudonyme de William Shakespeare, soit parfois avec le seul nom de plume Shake-speare, écrit ainsi, avec un trait d’union.

Les écrits du linguiste Florio ont évidemment beaucoup d’éléments en commun avec les pièces de théâtre signées Shakespeare ! L’analyse comparée de toute cette matière permet de conclure philologiquement qu’il s’agit en réalité d’un seul et unique auteur, John Florio, qui utilise son patronyme pour les œuvres d’érudition, et un nom de plume, Shakespeare, pour ses œuvres de fiction (shake spear, où la « lance » est évidemment sa plume). Des centaines et des centaines de mots, phrases, proverbes, idées utilisés par Shakespeare se retrouvent, très souvent antérieurement, dans les œuvres de Florio. Les deux hommes, Florio et Shakespeare, sont les plus importants créateurs de néologismes de leur époque. Le linguiste en a créé 1149, le dramaturge 1969.

Les  deux hommes ont le même style, utilisent les mêmes tournures de phrase, ils créent leurs mots à partir de l’italien, du français et du latin en suivant la même méthode. Mais il y a une différence cruciale encore une fois : Florio a étudié, il possède une éducation universitaire (il a fréquenté l’université de Tübingen en Allemagne et l’université d’Oxford), il possède une érudition certaine, il a résidé et voyagé en Europe et, dans son testament, a laissé à son ex-élève et protecteur William Herbert, troisième comte de Pembroke, une bibliothèque de plus de 700 volumes en quatre langues, l’une des plus riches de l’époque ! (Soit dit en passant : tous ces livres ont depuis disparu…) L’acteur de Stratford, de son côté, a peut-être fréquenté six ans l’école élémentaire, n’a jamais quitté son île et n’a pas laissé d’indice d’avoir possédé un seul livre…

Madrid

C’est le moment de pénétrer dans le tunnel.

Après avoir montré dans mon livre les raisons de la coïncidence de Shakespeare avec John Florio, en poursuivant mes recherches sur le même terrain, j’ai fait une découverte étonnante. Durant la courte renaissance anglaise, un rôle extraordinaire a été joué par la traduction : tout devait être traduit (les classiques et les modernes, les Italiens, les Français, les Espagnols) dans cette île qui, à l’époque, était plutôt « barbare » comparée à l’Italie, à la France et à l’Espagne. Avec une langue que personne ne parlait sur le Continent, elle était la Cendrillon de l’Europe. Or je l’ai dit, John Florio, alias Shakespeare, a été un des plus grands traducteurs de son temps mais, parmi ceux qui ont accompli un ouvrage remarquable, j’ai découvert aussi le traducteur du Don Quichotte, un certain Thomas Shelton. Je me suis dit que l’Irlandais Shelton aurait pu connaître Florio, Italien de lointaine origine juive espagnole et qui était dans une position de premier plan à Londres. Mais non, de Thomas Shelton il n’y a presque pas de traces dans l’Histoire. Il a traduit un chef-d’œuvre comme le Quichotte et rien d’autre : mille pages de grande littérature qui ont été lues par tous les écrivains anglais jusqu’aux XIXe et XXe siècles, mais rien sur le traducteur. Et pourtant, Cervantès et Shakespeare étaient tous les deux encore vivants en 1612… Le cas est trop vaste et complexe pour le présenter ici de façon exhaustive. J’ai écrit un long texte destiné à devenir bientôt un livre. J’ai réalisé que les rapports entre Shakespeare et Cervantès ont été perçus depuis très longtemps : il existe d’étranges consonances, d’incroyables similitudes et des coïncidences entre les œuvres des deux écrivains. Plusieurs exégètes se sont penchés sur la proximité entre la poétique de Cervantès et celle de Shakespeare, sur la parenté existant entre la philosophie de don Quichotte et celle d’Hamlet, entre l’esprit de Sancho et celui de Falstaff, etc., malgré la délicatesse du sujet qui touche à la susceptibilité de deux nations ex-impériales. Cela a retardé, voire carrément empêché une confrontation approfondie – historique, linguistique, sémiotique – entre ces deux cultures géographiquement distantes et entre ces deux langues. La simple possibilité que leur Génie national puisse dépendre de quelque façon que ce soit de l’autre grand rival étranger a suffi à décourager les spécialistes des deux côtés. Cependant, malgré ce tabou, comme toujours, il y a eu des gens qui ont vu et qui ont écrit. Ainsi a pris forme la question du rapport entre Shakespeare et Cervantès. Aujourd’hui, l’histoire du Cardenio, l’œuvre théâtrale perdue que Shakespeare aurait écrite avec John Fletcher et dont la matière provient du Don Quichotte, se trouve au centre de l’attention dans les deux camps. Mais déjà en 1860 l’écrivain russe Ivan Tourgueniev, dans une célèbre conférence parisienne, avait élaboré sur la très forte affinité entre Shakespeare et le Don Quichotte. José Ortega Y Gasset de son côté avait approfondi le lien en 1914. En 1916, James Fitzmaurice-Kelly dans une conférence intitulée « Cervantes and Shakespeare » soutenait :

«  … il n’y a aucun doute que Cervantès était à portée de main de Shakespeare. La traduction par Thomas Shelton de la première partie du Don Quichotte a bien été publiée en 1612. Est-ce que Shakespeare l’a lue ? Il me semble absolument probable que oui. »

L’intérêt est toujours si vif que, en 2005, l’Université d’Alicante a décidé d’organiser un séminaire portant sur le rapport entre les deux grands écrivains avec le titre « Cervantes and Shakespeare : New interpretations and comparative approaches » dont les actes ont été publiés l’année suivante. Dans l’introduction, J.M. Gonzalez Fernandez de Sevilla écrit, entre autres : « Bien qu’ils [Cervantès et Shakespeare] aient été considérés comme les plus grands modèles de la littérature occidentale, les spécialistes ont prêté peu d’attention à l’étude et à l’analyse de certains aspects similaires et contrastants qui pourraient par contre nous les faire comprendre davantage » (je souligne).

Un livre sur le sujet est paru en septembre 2012, The Quest for Cardenio. Shakespeare, Fletcher, Cervantes, and the Lost Play aux Presses de l’Université d’Oxford. Ce premier recueil d’essais témoigne de l’importance du rapport entre Shakespeare et Cervantès pour la recherche universitaire. Ce qu’il m’intéresse de souligner est que le rapport très étroit entre Shakespeare et Cervantès n’est pas le fruit de l’esprit troublé d’un investigateur isolé, mais bien un argument défini et étudié dans les universités. En étudiant et en comparant les quatre écrivains – Shakespeare, Cervantès, Florio et Shelton –, je me suis aperçu qu’il y avait beaucoup de chevauchements !

Voici une courte liste des similitudes entre Shakespeare et Cervantès qu’on a constatées au fil des siècles, mais que la critique a généralement négligé d’interpréter :

  • Sans éducation formelle, les deux réussissent à écrire des œuvres très riches en culture, en savoir : Cervantès ingenio lego (esprit inculte) comme Shakespeare, génie autodidacte.
  • L’ampleur de leurs lectures : le Don Quichotte, défini comme « un libro que habla sobre libros » ; les pièces de Shakespeare qui renvoient à des centaines de livres appartenant, à tout le moins, à cinq littératures : l’italienne, la française, la latine, l’espagnole, l’anglaise.
  • La bibliothèque de don Quichotte et les livres de Prospero, c’est-à-dire la bibliothèque fantôme de Shakespeare.
  • La culture encyclopédique de Shakespeare et de Cervantès.
  • La tendance commune aux emprunts, presque au plagiat. Les deux pillent au gré de leurs besoins.
  • L’influence italienne, des emprunts substantiels aux œuvres de Boccaccio, Sannazaro, Aretino, Tasso, Ariosto, la commedia dell’arte, Machiavelli, Cinzio, Castiglione, Bandello, etc.
  • La surprenante familiarité avec la Bible, évidente dans les œuvres de Shakespeare, est identique à la tout aussi surprenante culture biblique de Cervantès.
  • La grande, comparable connaissance des systèmes juridiques et légaux de leurs pays.
  • La musique : les deux ont une sensibilité et une culture musicales semblables.
  • Le fait que, comme dans le cas de Shakespeare, il n’existe pas de portrait certifié de Cervantès.
  • Les manuscrits : autant pour Shakespeare que pour Cervantès, leur absence est totale.
  • Coïncidence finale : les dernières pièces du Barde et les Novelas ejemplares de Cervantès sont des romances.

Outre ces points de contact concernant la biographie et la formation littéraire, il y a de nombreuses analogies structurelles, profondes entre les deux œuvres. Le Don Quichotte, le seul livre génial de Cervantès d’après Jorge Luis Borges, apparaît à Madrid l’année même où Angleterre et Espagne signent un traité de paix en 1605 à Valladolid. Mais le roman, promu par la Cour et jouissant d’un bon succès « de public », sera toutefois reçu avec hostilité par les écrivains espagnols. Considéré come un livre un-Spanish, il ne sera vraiment accueilli que deux siècles plus tard par la culture espagnole désireuse alors de rentrer dans la modernité. Sa fortune et son épanouissement en Angleterre, par contre, ne feront que grandir avec le temps.

Un livre possible...
Un livre possible…

Finalement, le tunnel Londres-Madrid nous mène vers plein de surprises : l’Anglais, le plus grand dramaturge moderne, et l’Espagnol, le premier romancier moderne, ne sont pas liés que par des traits esthétiques et stylistiques formels, mais par un lien bien plus profond et, je dirais, fort « charnel ». L’étude de cet improbable « quatuor » littéraire est la clé qui permet la transformation radicale de notre conception du début de la modernité et de notre interprétation de la fabrication des littératures nationales.

A La Une, JOHN FLORIO IS SHAKESPEARE

1769: Shakespear’s Robbery by Herbert Lawrence. MATERIAL FOR THE 2016 SHAKESPEARIAN JUBILEE

Lamberto Tassinari

I have recently read chapter nine of Book II of “The life and adventures of common sense: an historical allegory”, by Herbert Lawrence published in London in 1769. I knew that  Lawrence was one of the first to raise doubts on Shakespeare’s identity but the idea of reading his book never crossed my mind until I discovered his work on the internet. Shakespearian scholarship has ignored this book containing stunning evidence that in the eighteenth century England there were already widespread doubts about the official Shakespearian narrative. Since then, doubts have been silenced as the Stratfordian identity of Shakespeare must never be jeopardized. Specialists maintain that Lawrence’s sleazy portrait of Shakespeare wasn’t meant to be accusatory, rather a comic slander, a humorous compliment upon Shakespeare’s “thieving” of Genius and Humour , two of the figures of Lawrence’s allegory.

 In fact, chapter IX contains a very serious denunciation, albeit allegoric, of a cultural fraud perpetrated for nationalistic reasons. It is interesting to note that in the year Lawrence’s book was published, the first Shakespearian Jubilee was held in England. In September 1769 the actor David Garrick, the father of Bardolatry, staged the Shakespeare Jubilee in Stratford-upon-Avon. It was a major focal point in the emerging movement that helped cement Shakespeare as England’s national poet. I’m convinced that Lawrence, a physician, apparently a friend of Garrick, found a subtle, allegorical way to criticize the rising star of a fake Shakespeare without risking censorship.

From then on, the very few critics who commented his book, unsurprisingly decided to ignore the affirmation that the actor-thief Shakespear [sic] appropriated from a genial foreigner an artistic treasure. Lawrence’s pages resonate with incredible echoes of the English adventure of the Florios, father and son.

My comments to this amazing piece of literature are in bold type. I underlined some passages in Lawrence’s text.

Portrait of the thief
Portrait of the thief

 Book II, Chapter IX.

A little before the expiration of my emprisonment, I received a letter from my Mother informing me that WISDOM and she were then in England, where they willed very much to see me; they had become favourites in that Court, and WISDOM was frequently consulted by the reigning Queen Elizabeth. I had no inducement to make my stay at Florence longer than needs must; and therefore, as soon as I was at liberty, I took my departure for England on board a Genoese vessel. In our passage, we passed by that very formidable fleet called the Spanish Armada, which was destined for the invasion of England. We arrived at Dover in 1588, from whence I set out directly for London. Here PRUDENCE and I had the happiness of meeting again with my Mother and WISDOM in a country and at a time the most suitable to our respective inclinations.

In portraying the historical evolution of Civilization, Lawrence depicts here the departure of the Italian Renaissance from Florence, the city where very probably Michel Angelo Florio was born. From here on, the Renaissance will reside in England, considered by the author “a country most suitable” for the flourishing of the arts and letters.

I had nothing to do at Court, though I often went there, but to amuse myself; they did not stand in need of my assistances. My chief employment, in my profession, was in visiting the fanatics and papists, of which the latter were, several times, mad enough to attempt the life of their lawful sovereign; this I was always so lucky as to prevent, though I could never thoroughly cure the disease. At the time of my emprisonment in Florence, it seems my father, GENIUS and HUMOUR made a trip to London, where, upon their arrival, they made an acquaintance with a person belonging to the Playhouse; this man was a profligate in his youth, and, as some say, had been a deer-stealer, others deny it. But be that as it will, he certainly was a thief from the time he was first capable of distinguishing anything; and therefore it is immaterial what articles he dealt in.

This foreigner, whose family was originally from Florence, well gifted with genius and humor, met in London a person working in a playhouse, seemingly in a lower position, William Shakspear, a man with a very dubious moral reputation: the front man of the true dramatist was born!

My Father and his friends made a sudden and violent intimacy with this man, who, feeling that they were a negligent careless people, took the first opportunity that presented itself to rob them of everything he could lay his hands on, and the better to conceal his theft, he told them, with an affected concern, that one misfortune never comes alone — that they had been actually informed against, as persons concerned in an assassination plot, now secretly carrying on by Mary Queen of Scots against the Queen of England; that he knew their innocence, but they must not depend upon that: nothing but quitting the country could save them. They took his word and marched off forthwith for Holland. As soon as he had got fairly rid of them, he began to examine the fruits of his ingenuity.

… “ a sudden and violent intimacy”: what does this curious expression possibly mean? Whatever its meaning, what counts here is that the genial foreigner has been neutralized on a false accusation and thence Shakespear is taking advantage of his theft: “the fruits of his ingenuity”. One thinks of Florio’s “First Fruits” and “Second Frutes”…

 Amongst my Father’s baggage, he presently cast his eye upon a commonplace book, in which was contained an infinite variety of modes and forms to express all the different sentiments of the human mind, together with rules for their combinations and connections upon every subject or occasion that might occur in dramatic writing. He found too, in a small cabinet, a glass possessed of very extraordinary properties, belonging to GENIUS and invented by him; by the help of this glass he could not only approximate the external surface of any object, but even penetrate into the deep recesses of the soul of man, and so discover all the passions and note their various operations in the human heart. In a hat-box, wherein all the goods and chattels of HUMOUR were deposited, he met with a mask of curious workmanship; it had the power of making every sentence that came out of the mouth of the wearer, appear extremely pleasant and entertaining — the jocose expression of the features was exceedingly natural, and it had nothing of that shining polish common to other masks, which is too apt to cast disagreeable reflections.

This is a very incisive summary of Shakespeare’s genius: words, a world of words, rhetoric and formal skills for writing drama.

In what manner he had obtained this ill-gotten treasure was unknown to everybody but my Mother, WISDOM, and myself; and we should not have found it out if the mask, which upon all other occasions is used as a disguise, had not made the discovery. The mask of HUMOUR was our old acquaintance, but we agreed, though much against my Mother’s inclination, to take no notice of the robbery, for we conceived that my Father and his friends would easily recover their loss, and were likewise apprehensive that we could not distress this man without depriving his country of its greatest ornament.
 With these materials, and with good parts of his own, he commenced playwriter [sic]; how he succeeded is needless to say when I tell the reader that his name was Shakespear [sic].

How Shakespear, a commoner and a businessman occupying a mediocre position in the world of theatre, was ultimately able to steal such a treasure from a foreigner? No one knows. Finally, this is the point all critics would ignore: it was decided, however against wisdom’s principles, not to publicly denounce Shakespear’s robbery for, attributing those great plays and poems to a foreigner, would have implied depriving England of Shakespeare, her greatest treasure.

Herbert Lawrence could not have been clearer!

 

A La Une, JOHN FLORIO IS SHAKESPEARE

OPEN LETTER to Stephen Greenblatt

John FlorioLamberto Tassinari  www.johnflorio-is-shakespeare.com

You asked me recently why I maintain that I am afraid of you. As usual, I was unable to think of any answer to your question, partly for the very reason that I am afraid of you, and partly because an explanation of the grounds for this fear would mean going into far more details than I could even approximately keep in mind while talking. Franz

OPEN LETTER

Dear professor Greenblatt, Yes, this is the incipit of Kafka’s letter to his father. Why do I quote here this powerful, cruel confession? Because my little letter too is about authority, power, fear and love of art. You are the indisputable authority of the Shakespearean studies and ipso facto, the keystone of the grand, albeit crumbling Stratfordian edifice. Thirty years ago, when the majority of English literature teachers in schools and universities were traditionally dealing with the romantic image of the isolated, universal genius, you started, to paraphrase the title of Duff Cooper’s book, a “saving sergeant Shakespeare” campaign, a literary operation aimed to sustain the Stratfordian identity of Shakespeare which was in peril. Within a few years, with the contribution of a handful of scholars, you dramatically reshaped the Shakespearean aura in order to save the identity of the author. Your strategy consisted essentially in imagining and portraying the “real” world in which Shakespeare, the mystery man, lived and wrote. A diminished Bard emerged from this operation, an almost surreal author candidly described by the critic Harold Bloom in the following terms … it is as though the creator of scores of major characters and hundreds of frequently vivid minor figures wasted no imaginative energy in inventing a persona for himself. (…) At the very center of the Canon is the least self- conscious and least aggressive of all the major writers we have known With the new Shakespeare, everything important and meaningful had to be newly imagined, and you were fantastic at that as your 2004 best seller biography Will in the World. How Shakespeare became Shakespeare shows. As a kind of postmodern Fernand Braudel, you knead the history of the English Renaissance you master perfectly with an extraordinary intimate knowledge of Shakespeare’s works, then transplant the anemic man from Stratford within that historical- literary compound, shamelessly using the glue of the numerous may well’s, could have’s, perhaps’, no doubt’s, evidently’s and likely’s. To perfect your revisionist labour you craftily called your product, Will instead of the canonical William. Such a familiarity with an author considered until recently a god, helped seduce your readers and the media, convincing almost everyone that you had brought to life the real Shakespeare. Thanks to some subtle manipulations, and mainly omissions, the Bard became the impure, plagiarist, collaborative playwright we now know: a perfect, postmodern Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. Soon though you realized that the downsizing wasn’t sufficiently safe. Indeed, your 2004 Will in The World has several flaws, the more serious and inexcusable is your total lack of consideration of Montaigne’s influence on Shakespeare. Obviously you were aware of Montaigne’s fundamental contribution to modernity and to Shakespeare’s works, but you refused to acknowledge his importance. I strongly believe you did so because admitting the French philosopher’s influence on the plays, would have been too risky a concession for the already shaky Stratfordian mythology. Therefore you decided to name Montaigne only once while referring, quick as a flash, to John Florio: Born in London, the son of Protestant refugees from Italy, Florio had already published several language manuals, along with a compendium of six thousand Italian proverbs; he would go on to produce an important Italian-English dictionary and a vigorous translation, much used by Shakespeare, of Montaigne’s Essays. Florio became a friend of Ben Jonson, and there is evidence that already in the early 1590s he was a man highly familiar with the theater.(p.227) Which is a bold statement indeed for Florio albeit with no interpretive consequences on your theory. Of course, none of the thousands Shakespearean critics denounced your omission, not on account of respect or fear of you but because they wanted to avoid a dangerous, internecine war which could have jeopardized the object of your common study and careers. In the years following your biography, the Stratfordian mythology crisis worsened with more attacks from all sides: several books by Oxfordian scholars, the good scholarly reputation earned by Diana Price’s Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography, the Declaration of Reasonable Doubt about the identity of William Shakespeare, the movie Anonymous, just to mention the more significant blows. There was also, in 2008 and 2009, my book and my website on John Florio, pounding at the periphery of the Shakespearean universe. As your revisionist Shakespeare became a baroque, bizarre writer, an unsatisfactory Bard in the long run, you judged that a bolder sortie was inevitable and in April 2014 you dared to publish Shakespeare’s Montaigne, a dense anthology of John Florio’s translation of Montaigne’s Essays. So, you did jump from zero Montaigne in 2004 to a book on Florio’s Montaigne in 2014: a really dramatic veer! Why? I believe it was because the postmodern Shakespeare you created was insufficient to stem the growing doubts about Stratford. Omission is your key-tool: in your introduction to Shakespeare’s Montaigne, as well as in Peter Platt’s biographical note, there is no mention of the historical discussion on the Montaigne-Shakespeare rapport, just a hurried admission: “Scholars have seen Montaigne’s fingerprints on many other works by Shakespeare whether in the echoing of words or ideas” . Your readers are not aware that Montaigne’s influence on the bard has always been a conflicting issue amongst scholars. One more omission, particularly nasty, concerns a book traditionally “censured” by Shakespearean scholars, Shakspere’s (sic) Debt to Montaigne the fundamental 1925 book by George Coffin Taylor who demonstrated ninety years ago the extent and depth of Montaigne’s influence on Shakespeare! Your rapport to John Florio too is, unsurprising, ambiguous as you try to repress what, I suspect, is your persistent, hidden doubt that Florio is more than a translator… Of the Italian Jewish writer you say this: “Montaigne was Florio’s Montaigne. His essays, in their rich Elizabethan idiom and wildly inventive turns of phrase”; and “the brilliance of Florio’s achievement”; “[Florio’s] translation seemed to address English readers of Shakespeare’s time with unusual directness and intensity”; “Shakespeare is mining Florio’s Montaigne not simply for turns of phrase but for key concepts” but at the same time you maintain that “there was a huge gap between them” [Montaigne and Shakespeare]. Your mind swings over and over as you seem to conclude that there was no real need for Shakespeare to have read Montaigne because they are “two of the greatest writers of the Renaissance” and somehow telepathically connected, two twin souls! And again: “But if Montaigne and Shakespeare were diametrically opposites in these and other ways (…) nonetheless there is a whole world that they share.” Which is a quite ambiguous position. An ambiguity though which reflects Florio’s own ambivalence towards Montaigne. Florio’s Essays are an immense, open source for the playwright but Shakespeare’s diversions from Montaigne on many points are already contained in Florio’s translation. For instance, Florio’s “politico-religious bias appears from time to time (…) ‘les erreurs de Wyclef’ become ‘Wickliff’s opinions’ as Frances Yates pointed out in her 1934 biography. Shakespeare’s religious, political, cultural, psychological variations from Montaigne that you track down in King Lear, Hamlet, The Tempest and elsewhere belong to Florio’s Montaigne which in the opinion of many scholars is almost an original book rather than a mere translation. As for your collaborator Peter Platt, he calls John Florio: the extraordinary Florio. One fundamental question remains unanswered: which other dramatists of Shakespeare’s time were influenced so profoundly by Florio’s Montaigne? Isn’t it bizarre, that amongst all the Montaigne’s readers in Renaissance England, only the uneducated, untraveled, monolingual Shakespeare bore the marks of the French thinker’s influence? With John Florio as the true Shakespeare you don’t have to suppose, as you unbelievably do, that Shakespeare looking over Florio’s shoulders read Montaigne’s translation “well before the first printing” in 1603! Today the sudden landing of Montaigne on your desk, dramatically exposes your personal, private will! What could happen now, professor Greenblatt, should you unearth more of previously undetected or overlooked influences on Shakespeare? What would be the new face of Shakespeare if you would suddenly “discover”, for instance, that Giordano Bruno who spent two years with Florio at the French embassy, has a strong presence in Shakespeare’s work? In your biography Bruno, alike Montaigne, is mentioned only once. You don’t ignore that the strong influence of Giordano Bruno on Shakespeare is hardly a recent discovery. Actually it was demonstrated by a host of scholars, from the German Falkson and the French Bartholmess in 1846 throughout Tschischwitz, König, Carrière, to Sacerdoti and Gatti-Cox in the 1990s. And what about the powerful influence that all things Italian, language and culture, had on Shakespeare? Lastly, what do you think of the hypothesis advanced by Saul Frampton in 2013 – and recalled by Peter Platt – that John Florio was the editor of the First Folio ? The real purpose of your rushed anthology, I suppose, is to freeze Florio in the role of Shakespeare’s almost involuntary helper. But, remember, in doing so you are just delaying Florio’s revelation. Actually, thanks to your initiative John Florio, until now completely unknown by Shakespeare’s lovers, is exposed worldwide to your readers, becoming the most intriguing figure of the English Renaissance, the closest to Shakespeare! By igniting people’s curiosity you provoke new doubts about the Stratford man and in doing so hasten his vanishing. How long, professor Greenblatt, till you’ll give us a book on Shakespeare’s Bruno or, why not, on Shakespeare’s Florio?
Best regards,
Lamberto Tassinari